Top 5 Social Media Stories Of The Week: Google To Launch Facebook Competitor

Google has made a few attempts to become the next new force in social media and you would think with it’s current world wide global domination of the web that it would would be an easy task to displace the likes of Facebook and Twitter which are the young upstarts on the block.

The challenge for most companies is that when they step away from their core business that replicating their success in one field is not as easy as it seems.

Google Wave has ended in tears with the announcement  of it being closed down in December and Google Buzz is still hanging in there but has has failed to ignite any serious competition to Facebook or Twitter.

Sources are saying that Google will be launching a social networking platform called Google ME as early as November.

1. Google To Launch Facebook Competitor

Facebook’s exponential growth in popularity can be attributable to the site being the first social network to offer a more seamless user experience with an emphasis on sharing what friends really wanted to see and read, instead of a steady stream of spam-like content found on then the largest social network, MySpace, which is owned by News Corporation.

Competitors underestimated Facebook’s growth potential, forecasting its strong momentum at the time would not sustain in the longer run.

Fast-forward only a few years, and Facebook today is challenging Google’s top spot as the world’s largest web property.

It appears Google will finally utilize already popular products to leverage itself into social networking by adding layers of social networking elements into some of its properties, like YouTube, starting as early as this November…read more

2. Mark Zuckerberg Now Richer Than Steve Jobs

Just 5 years after founding Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg is worth more than Apple’s iconic chief Steve Jobs. This year, Zuckerberg, 26, added $4.9 billion to his fortune–vaulting to #35 on the Forbes 400 with an estimated fortune of $6.9 billion. Why the jump? Recent private equity investments in Facebook valued the firm at around $23 billion–more than triple its 2009 value of $7 billion..read more

3. Ashton Kutcher Has Little Twitter Influence

A study conducted at Northwestern University determined that celebrities like Ashton Kutcher with millions of Twitter followers are mostly ignored on the social media site, resulting in very little if any influence.
When the researchers applied their mathematical algorithm to the countless tweets that appear on Twitter each day, they found that experts in certain fields were much more likely to cause topics of discussion to become trends

4. Twitter To Release Real Time Analytics Solution

Twitter is planning to release a real time analytics dashboard in Q4. Like their releases of ads and the new UI, this will likely start as a beta release and have a phased roll out. The product will leverage algorithms similar to the Twitter Resonance concept in order to show users which tweets are spreading, who is influential in their network, and more. The emphasis is on real time in order to help users make adjustments on the fly to their tactics..read more

5. Twitter Now Getting More Traffic Than My Space

Twitter’s number of monthly unique visitors finally surpassed that of MySpace in August. Though it ranked third among social networking sites, Twitter ranked #50 in the list of top 50 properties overall. The numbers were crunched by the marketing research firm comScore..read more

Image by George Hall